Comments on clearing 347 hectares of Sines forest close 12 November
The company that runs the Sines industrial zone, aicep Global Parques, wants to clear 347 hectares holding 3,593 cork oaks, and 302 comments had come in by 8 November, four days before the consultation closes. A smaller clearing there in 2025 drew 19 comments and was approved with conditions.
The land lies in Unidade de Execução A2, a 443-hectare part of the Sines industrial zone. The company that runs the zone, aicep Global Parques, wants to clear 347.62 hectares of it in four phases, so that factories and warehouses can move in later. The plots have to be handed over "free of forest cover", says the plain-language summary of the impact study, as reported by Lusa. That report doesn't say which companies would get them.
Surveyors counted 3,593 cork oaks on the site, 3,373 of them taller than a metre. Cork oak is protected by law in Portugal. Cutting it down means the developer has to make up for the loss, as that law sets out. About 260 hectares are mixed woodland of maritime pine, stone pine and cork oak, and the rest is eucalyptus, scrub and bare ground. The work is staged, starting with 66.38 hectares, so land isn't cleared before it's needed, and no more than six months may pass between felling a plot and starting to build on it.
The consultation is run by CCDR Alentejo, the regional body that's in charge of this assessment. It's open until 12 November. By 8 November, 302 comments had come in on participa.pt, a site that only opens from a Portuguese connection, and you'll need to register there before you can comment. The documents are also on view at the CCDR's office in Évora.
In the Serra do Marão, a 21-hectare solar plant beside the Penedo Ruivo wind farm drew 666 comments between 13 March and 24 April, 661 of them from individual citizens. The environment agency APA turned it down. Its main reason was that the site lies wholly inside the Alvão/Marão special conservation area, though Lusa reported that the decision also weighed what the public had said.
Sines went through this in 2025 as well. The same company asked to clear 30.27 hectares elsewhere in the zone, in an area called 1A3, to make way for Repsol solar panels and for access roads to green hydrogen, green ammonia and lithium battery projects. Nineteen comments came in, 17 of them from private people or groups, one from Sines council and one from the environmental group GEOTA, and most were against. On 3 October 2025 the CCDR gave the plan a favourable decision with conditions, including a compensation plan for the 1,491 lone cork oaks and 7.56 hectares of cork oak woodland it would remove.
